As an apology for this one leap week, we're going to have a couple of consecutive days of Song of the Week between posts and former articles' updates, covering up Ura songs from the past, the present and the future. For the past's represensative, see you after the jump!
| Game | Genre |
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| AC0 G NS1 (DLC) PS4 (DLC) RC Plus/STH |
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★1 (33) |
★1 (51) |
★1 (95) |
★1 (145) |
★10 (468) |
120
manpu9 (initial arcade/console and Plus STH cover ver.) / manpu2 (AC/RC original version) Not only by means of compensation for the skipped week, but today's article might as well one of the biggest ones around Song of the Week shores yet (and seeing for how long I've been running this, that's SAYING something!), not only for the technical feats introduced in general Taiko-playing lore alone, but also for what concerns the song itself and its makers' history in general. The Anata to Turattata hole digs deeper and deeper the more you look at it, touching a number of topics from Nissin Food to Sonic the Hedgehog, to Taiko-contest-winning composers and even last week's World Championships Finals, where it was played in the heat of the competition alongside all the Namco Original picks for it!
Anata to Turattata♪ was the opening theme to NHK's final morning drama series for the Heisei era (99th overall): the 150-episodes-spanning Manpaku (まんぷく), running from October 2018 to March 2019. One of the many dramas depicting a couple's struggles to survive in everyday life, its defining trait is that it's a fictional story inspired by the real-life accountings of the Nissin Food Products founder Momofuku Ando and his wife Masako, with brief end segments profiling mockup instant ramen recipes in line with the still-operative company's strong suit. With little to no public information about the morning drama's protagonist Masako, all promotional materials and script structuring were based on interviews with relatives and the few written personal documents (notebooks and diary fragments) she left behind.
The act composing this song is the R&B/New Wave pop unit Dreams Come True from 1988, started out as a trio act of lead vocalist Miwa Yoshida (吉田美和), bassist Masato Nakamura (中村正人) and keyboard player Takahiro 'Nihya' Nishikawa (西川隆宏), who left in 2002 in order to pursue a solo carreer. Yoshida also plays a big role on the songs' lyrics body, down to the direction of the act's song titles and lettering which -by admission of Nakamura in an interview- also affected Anata to Turattata♪ 's name decision, from the made-up alliterating name down to the musical note as an 'artsy' way to add a dot in the title. Their fifth studio album release, The Swinging Star, became the first album in Japan to sell more than 3 million copies, thus becoming the country's best-selling release for quite a while.
Nakamura is not one to play his roles from the backlines either, considering the healthy projects he worked on his own in the 90ies, from Western animation movies' JP opening themes (among which, New Line Cinema's The Swan Princess and Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire) to Disney amusement park music up to -that's right!- Sonic the Hedgehog in its earliest years. More specifically, the first two games of the popular series on Sega Genesis were entirely scored by him while working for a couple of Dreams Come True studio albums (Million Kisses during Sonic 1's development and The Swinging Star during Sonic 2's), with the direction of making a "movie soundtrack"-like experience for the blue speedster's debut. This commission line was highly prized by the same Nakamura to the point of him making several vocal/instrumental cover versions of his tracks as Dreams Come True songs between years (for a quick example, here's a live recording of Marry Me?, heavily inspired by his work on the iconic Green Hill Zone theme from Sonic 1); conversely, Sega has also paid respect to their first musical contributor to the Sonic lore years later, by giving him a speaking role (the Siberian champion) in the Japanese version of the second Sonic the Hedgehog movie!
Anata to Turattata's Taiko journey has been quite an interesting one on its debut year, not limited by the elephant-in-the-room record set by its extreme star rating divergences alone! For its debut on Taiko no Tatsujin Green Version arcades on April 2019 and the contemporary digital releases of the games of the time, the song was at first included as a cover version like many, only to get quite the traction across players and social media! Thus, as also announced online on Dreams Come True's official website (link), the song cover was replaced with the original version from late October of the same year, which is also the version that is available to play in the more recent Rhythm Connect. Masato Nakamura revealed for an interview how Turattata's original feedback was mostly of people annoyed for having an energetic, "march-like" song to be the opening of an early-hours morning drama show, but he's glad donders everywhere found a place in their heart for it. It's even the favorite tune to play for Nakamura's young daughter on arcades... as long as someone helps her selecting it before the timer runs out!
In rather the unique fashion, we also got quite the interesting follow-up on official Taiko gaming's turf, as the same Nakamura was invited in late 2019 for an interview by Bandai Namco to be posted online! The person interviewing him was none other than the nicknamed Yomii of many-a-Taiko-music-contest-victory fame, asking his stance on many of the artist's takes on a number of topics, from Turattata's creation to his former commission works (some of which penned also on this very post!) and assorted anecdotes. Among those, Nakamura told how he got approached by someone from an unnamed famous game company, asking him if combining games and music could be feasable and getting as a reply "I don't know, what if you could score points by hitting notes with a drum at the right time?". Mind you, this was an episode from 27-28 years ago by Nakamura's words, so he might have come up with the core concept for Taiko no Tatsujin as a random idea, become it could even become real from Namco! It's also interesting how the same Yomii was also asked his own takes about his beginnings and general insights on music in the ongoing social-media-directed world, including how his first song ever made -D's Adventure Note from the 2nd CreoFUGA contest- was made with a 30-days trial version of Digital Audio Workstation... with nothing but a mouse to drag every single note on the editor- no MIDI keyboard on toe back then! The full interview with the two is still available on Bandai Namco's YouTube channel (link), with a 3-parter transcript of its key points (always in Japanese) available as a separate post on RealSound (link).
In the ongoing Nijiiro Version climate, Anata to Turattata's regular Oni setting bears the smallest note amount for an Oni mode that is available to play at all times, shrinking down to 3rd place when time-limited songs are also factored in (namely, Kidaruma 2000 and Yokuderu 15300). But of course, what most people are looking after is the spicier top-starred Ura counterpart, where dense monocolor cluster mashing is the norm! Yomii in the aforementioned interview took advantage of the chart talk to digress on the popular technique that was adapted for arcade plays between 2014/2015 to tackle such high-density bursts when quick handswitching won't do the trick: hit quickly the drum twise with your right-hand drumstick, then hit it twice quickly with the left-hand one and go on until the clusiter spike is done. This "double-stroke" approach only became more and more relevant with the ongoing charting approaches, so having a song mostly made with these kinds ofclusiters at hand (and monocolor at that) might be handy to practice this advanced technique on, in spite of the really taxing clear quota the low number of features notes brings in. Not too shabby for the Heisei era's final Ura Oni challenge, aye?
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Thanks for sticking by! With the 'past' Ura part of the bargain done, I redirect you to the following former Song of the Week entries for their Ura Oni additions of today for the 'present' part! See you tomorrow for our 'future' Ura look.
Emma
Aloft in the Wind
Sai Hate no Mahoutsukai
